Conservative name / Progressive Perspective

Today, January 4, 2007, is the day that the 110th Congress convenes. Today is the day that the House of Representatives is surely under the control of the Democratic Party and hopefully, depending upon the states of Senator Johnson’s health and Senator Lieberman’s ego, the Senate will be as well. Hopefully today will mark the beginning of the full retreat of Georgitism from its War on Iraq, its War on the global environment, and its war on US Constitutional Democracy, just as the surrender of Gen. von Paulus at Stalingrad on February 2, 1943, marked the beginning of the end for German Nazi Fascism. Hopefully, the final defeat of the Georgite version will not take nearly as long nor cost nearly so many lives or treasure.

The Democratic Congress has a very full agenda before it, which I need not retail in detail here. One word that is on the lips of many, including many of my dearest friends on the Democratic Left, is “Impeachment.” As I noted in my TPJ column of Nov. 30, 2006: Cindy Sheehan, among others, has made a powerful argument for impeachment (Cindy Sheehan: Open Letter to Reps Pelosi and Conyers, http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article15595.htm). As one good friend of mine said: “The people spoke, despite the big bucks. Now let Congress do the will of the people, and forget the political correctness. Let us not be kind to those who drug
America through the briar patch, to those who tried to destroy democracy and our inalienable rights and to those who cared not a whit about human beings. Let those who tried desperately to murder the Constitution be punished instead of shielded because of false sentiment of the ‘higher good.’ The higher good is always accountability. Always.”

Among those on our side, there is a great debate going on, on this issue. On Dec. 8, 2006, TomPaine.com(mon Sense, and wouldn’t Tom Paine himself just loved the Internet?!? I wonder how many webmagazines and weblogs he would have appeared on) presented both sides of the issue in: “Impeachment: Morally Right vs. Politically Wrong; The great debate: Jennifer Van Bergenargues that impeachment is essential to national healing. David Cornwarns that the political result for progressives will be disastrous.” Jennifer Van Bergen’s summary went: “The choice is not between impeachment and
Iraq, or impeachment and ethics, or impeachment and the budget. Impeachment proceedings are not the beginning but the end result of a healing process for the nation that needs to begin now. Impeachment begins with investigations.” David Corn’s: “The matter of impeachment, like most issues in the real world, cannot be considered in a vacuum. The key question is not whether there is a case, but whether it should be prosecuted. The Democrats would do so at their peril—and at risk to their agenda, which includes stopping the war in
Iraq.” I agree with both, as it happens. How can you do that, you might ask. By carefully picking my target for impeachment, I would answer. And that target would not by Bush, it would be Cheney. For the reasons set forth briefly below.

Cheney is clearly the power behind the Bush throne, the puppet master not only for Bush himself but for all of the other puppets both within and without the Administration mouth the Cheney line in unison. Think of the marvelous scene in the movie version of Chicago in which the lawyer Billy Flynn, with Roxie Hart as a ventriloquist’s dummy sitting on his knee, “razzle dazzles ‘em,” the press corps as puppets. Cheney is clearly “out to get” Constitutional Democracy through his strong, open, and repeated advocacy of what he calls the “Unitary Executive.” (Most observers would call this “fascism,” see my definition at the end of this column, but we need not go there at this point.) What he describes as the powers of the President appear nowhere in the document, unless one abandons its plain language (and no less an authority than Antonin Scalia tells us that we must never do that [even though he himself does, often, as I have illustrated on these pages]). His open advocacy of torture violates the Geneva Conventions, part themselves of the Constitution (by the terms of Article VI). We do not know what role he may have played in the horror of 9/11 and its aftermath, he has kept secret to this very day the proceedings of his famous energy task force that may have started the active plotting for the War for Oil (oops I mean on Iraq). Of course he very actively led the lying that got the
United States into the Iraq War. And so on and so forth.

But Bush has done exactly the same things, so why not go after him? David Corn has dealt with the political risks of doing so, and I fully agree with him. Further, in practical terms, even if it were possible to get an impeachment vote in the House, a conviction vote in the Senate, on one or more of the issues cited above, would be virtually impossible to achieve. And believe me, Bush is no Nixon, in more ways than one. However, Cheney has other potential chinks in his armor, of the potentially criminal variety. Therefore to my mind he makes a much more inviting target. If criminality could be proved conclusively, it might indeed be possible to get a conviction in the Senate. We have already seen Republicans running away from BushCheney. Supposing it were just Cheney by his lonesome? Hey, you never know. I am not going to deal here with the succession issues. I am going to briefly review the potentially criminal matters on which he might be hoisted.

They begin with one word: “Halliburton.” As gleaned in just a first go from the web, via the good offices of Project censored (http://www.projectcensored.org/), here are a few items that would seem ripe for criminal investigation:

ITEM: “Halliburton Charged with Selling Nuclear Technologies to Iran” (http://www.projectcensored.org/censored_2007/index.htm), With Source: Global Research.ca, August 5, 2005, Title: “Halliburton Secretly Doing Business Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team,” Author: Jason Leopold: “According to journalist Jason Leopold, sources at former Cheney company Halliburton allege that, as recently as January of 2005, Halliburton sold key components for a nuclear reactor to an Iranian oil development company. Leopold says his Halliburton sources have intimate knowledge of the business dealings of both Halliburton and Oriental Oil Kish, one of
Iran’s largest private oil companies. . . . Halliburton has a long history of doing business in
Iran, starting as early as 1995, while Vice President Cheney was chief executive of the company.”

ITEM: “Homeland Security Contracts KBR to Build Detention Centers in the US” (KBR is Halliburton subsidiary), Sources: New America Media, January 31, 2006, “Homeland Security Contracts for Vast New Detention Camps,” February 21, 2006, “10-Year US Strategic Plan for Detention Camps Revives Proposals from Oliver North,” Author: Peter Dale Scott. “Halliburton’s subsidiary KBR (formerly Kellogg, Brown and Root) announced on January 24, 2006 that it had been awarded a $385 million contingency contract by the Department of Homeland Security to build detention camps in the
United States. . . . What little coverage the announcement received focused on concerns about Halliburton’s reputation for overcharging
U.S. taxpayers for substandard services. . . .” (For a full discussion of the terrifying substance of this matter, go to the Project Censored website.) Which brings us to the final item, on which a very through investigation might just find unimpeachable (but totally impeachable) evidence of Vice-Presidential criminality, the pathway that I suggest be followed.

ITEM: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Rose Over 3000 Percent Last Year,” Raw Story, October 2005, Title: “Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Rose 3,281 Percent Last Year, Senator Finds,” Author: John Byrne; (and lo, and behold) Senator Frank Lautenberg’s website:“Cheney’s Halliburton Stock Options Soar to $9.2 Million.” Vice President Dick Cheney’s stock options in Halliburton rose from $241,498 in 2004 to over $8 million in 2005, an increase of more than 3,000 percent, as Halliburton continues to rake in billions of dollars from no-bid/no-audit government contracts. An analysis released by Senator Frank Lautenberg (D-NJ) reveals that as Halliburton’s fortunes rise, so do the Vice President’s. Halliburton has already taken more than $10 billion from the Bush-Cheney administration for work in
Iraq. They were also awarded many of the unaccountable post-Katrina government contracts, as off-shore subsidiaries of Halliburton quietly worked around U.S. sanctions to conduct very questionable business with
Iran (See Story #2). ‘It is unseemly,’ notes Lautenberg, ‘for the Vice President to continue to benefit from this company at the same time his administration funnels billions of dollars to it.’ According to the Vice President’s Federal Financial Disclosure forms, he holds the following Halliburton stock options: 100,000 shares at $54.5000 (vested) expire December 3, 2007, 33,333 shares at $28.1250 (vested), expire December 2, 2008, 300,000 shares at $39.5000 (vested), expire December 2, 2009. The Vice President has attempted to fend off criticism by signing an agreement to donate the after-tax profits from these stock options to charities of his choice, and his lawyer has said he will not take any tax deduction for the donations. However, the Congressional Research Service (CRS) concluded in September 2003 that holding stock options while in elective office does constitute a “financial interest” regardless of whether the holder of the options will donate proceeds to charities.

Valued at over $9 million, the Vice President could exercise his stock options for a substantial windfall, not only benefiting his designated charities, but also providing Halliburton with a tax deduction. CRS also found that receiving deferred compensation is a financial interest. The Vice President continues to receive deferred salary from Halliburton. While in office, he has received the following salary payments from Halliburton: Deferred salary paid by Halliburton to Vice President Cheney in 2001: $205,298, in 2002: $162,392, in 2003: $178,437, in 2004: $194,852. (The CRS report can be downloaded at: http://lautenberg.senate.gov/Report.pdf) These CRS findings contradict Vice President Cheney’s puzzling view that he does not have a financial interest in Halliburton. On the September 14, 2003 edition of Meet the Press in response to questions regarding his relationship with Halliburton, where from 1995 to 2000 he was employed as CEO, Vice President Cheney said, ‘Since I left Halliburton to become George Bush’s vice president, I’ve severed all my ties with the company, gotten rid of all my financial interest. I have no financial interest in Halliburton of any kind and haven’t had, now, for over three years.’ ”

My oh my, it seems to me, what a rich Cheney-impeachment field there is to plow. Political risks, to be sure, as there are in any impeachment attempt. But following this line of attack, it would be much easier for House prosecutors investigating possible just garden-variety criminality to ask for “The facts, just the facts, Ma’am, and sir.” And hey, if he’s got nothing to hide, well then, he’s got nothing to hide, and in the meantime, oh-so-many facts about policy will be brought out too, as “totally incidental to the investigation of possible criminality,” of course.

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Note: “Fascism is a politico-economic system in which there is: total executive branch control of both the legislative and administrative powers of government; no independent judiciary; no Constitution that embodies the Rule of Law standing above the people who run the government; no inherent personal rights or liberties; a single national ideology that first demonizes and then criminalizes all political, religious, and ideological opposition to it; and total corporate determination of economic, fiscal, and regulatory policy.” (If you want to see my longer definitions, please refer to my columns of May 27, 2004 “On Fascism — And The Georgites,” of Jan 27, 2005 “Comparing George W. Bush and Adolf Hitler”, and of February 10, 2005, “The Georgite Version of ‘Freedom and Democracy’.”)